Your letters

Assisted suicide is not an answer

Catherine Bennett suggests that objections to legalising assisted suicide are based on religious grounds ('Let this woman die as she chooses, not in a death plant', Comment, last week). Yet 94 per cent of specialist palliative care physicians oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide.

We wish to protect and conserve the dignity of all dying patients, who may feel depressed, a burden to others or fear future pain. Research shows that if patients approaching death are treated as if they no longer matter, they will act and believe that life is not worth living.

A law permitting assisted suicide would be a message to vulnerable dying patients that they were no longer valued. A society that endorses assisted suicide is inevitably less committed to care of the dying. A society that rejects assisted suicide and embraces palliative care expresses its valuing of people until the end of their lives.

The current law is not 'barbaric'; it protects not only doctors and nurses who are free to talk to patients about their fears, but also thousands of vulnerable patients. Bennett dismisses 'euthanasia scare stories', but I find Mary Warnock's linkage of euthanasia for dementia suffers with the saving of NHS resources pretty scary too.Dr David JeffreyHonorary Senior Lecturer in Palliative MedicineUniversity of Edinburgh

Catherine Bennett writes from the point of view of a valued member of society. She has no understanding of what it means to be regarded as useless and unwanted. Elderly and frail people are already subjected to the psychological abuse of an indifferent society, but to give families and carers the protection of the law to, in effect, bully their 'loved' ones into taking their lives would be a true horror.Dr Stephane DuckettLondon SE11

My nest egg's cracked

Among victims of the financial crash is a group of big losers without any compensation: banks' staff members.

I am a bank pensioner and in the last decades of employment I was encouraged by successive Chancellors to invest in my employer through profit-sharing schemes and Save As You Earn. I built up a nest egg to see me through retirement. Now my nest egg has gone, but I do have a company pension which I hope is solvent. If not, I and hundreds of thousands of staff members are as much victims as anyone else.Brian RobinsonBrentwood, Essex

Neither my words nor views

A book review which appeared under my byline (The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism by Ron Suskind, Review, last week) ascribed to me views which I do not hold.

I did not assert simplistically that the book 'is an exposé of how both the Bush and Blair governments knew that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, but none the less still went to war', but described it, with deliberate cynicism, as 'a supposedly explosive exposé' which claimed that. Nor did I write any words remotely resembling: 'Since 9/11, Suskind has focused his attention on George Bush's White House, laying bare the inefficiencies and duplicities of the current administration in two bestsellers' - again an opinion of Suskind's work with which, to put it mildly, I do not concur.

Nor I did not write: 'Suskind's revelations about the CIA being behind the forged letter [between the head of Iraqi intelligence and Saddam Hussein] are, on the other hand, a genuine journalistic slam dunk and on their own would make this book an important piece of investigative reporting.'

In fact, Suskind made no such surprise new revelations; it was already known that such a forged letter existed and widely assumed that the CIA was behind it. I actually wrote: 'I am not convinced by Suskind's account of it being drafted on "creamy" White House stationery', which was, in fact, the author's 'bombshell' claim.

Your readers should therefore know that my review was considerably more critical of Suskind's 'novelistic non-fiction' than the version you published.Andrew StephenWashington DC

Great tribute to Paul Newman

I do not know whether Newman was at 'peace with death' from reading Sam Mendes's wonderful article (News, last week). I consider that anyone who was the subject of such a moving and warm tribute would have all the attributes of a great human being. I felt moved by the description of how Conrad Hall, the cinematographer, observed the effects of ageing on Newman, as it made me recall seeing my father's decline. Andy WhiteTowcester, Northamptonshire

Dubai is not all dubious

Just because Ms Cadwalladr met some disgruntled expats does not mean that everyone in Dubai is miserable, alcoholic or that the city is a disastrous place to live ('Desert storm', OM, last week). We are a normal family, with two children in school, doing normal jobs and enjoying our life here. Yes, as in any big city, there is a 'seedy underworld' but not all of us belong to it. Some of us enjoy the beach, swim in the sea and feel safe in this multicultural city.Caroline TapkenDubai

Junk food for thought

Robert Yates ('Don't blame Jamie for a nation's ills', Comment, last week) assumes personal responsibility can be exerted against the flow of misinformation dispersed by the food industry. His statement that 'you'd have to be an idiot of the highest order not to clock that... in Britain life chances are still hugely determined by the lottery of birth' tellingly betrays a lack of awareness about other segments of society. TV and the tabloid press are the dominant gatekeepers of information for many people, who absorb and internalise their rhetoric of meritocracy, propagated by the same agencies that depict Pot Noodles and Turkey Twizzlers as real food.Joel HartleyLeeds

Speaking in tongue

Your article 'Barrow, blue-collar capital of Britain' (News, last week) took me back to a weekend in the early Seventies when, as a middle-class southern girl, I went north to meet my future mother-in-law. Walney Island's back-to-back terrace housing had been built to accommodate the shipyard workers, and she lived in one of these homes.

On the Saturday evening at the working men's club, there was an elimination dance when couples had to sit down if they answered 'yes' to any of the caller's questions. To the locals' amusement, I had to ask my partner whether he was 'on a promise tonight', as I had no idea what it meant.

I had been invited to visit groups of relatives on the Sunday. Offering food to the visitor (and only the visitor) was clearly the custom. I munched my way through four plates of tongue sandwiches. I haven't eaten tongue since.Judith AndersonBath

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